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Friday, March 1, 2013

Jack the Giant Slayer

Review by Bob Ignizio

With complete soulless efficiency, JACK
THE GIANT SLAYER delivers
exactly what it promises. If you want to see a group of mostly
respectable actors (Stanley Tucci, Ewan McGregor, Ian McShane)
pretending to run away from and occasionally fight computer generated
giants in computer generated environments, you've got it. If, on the
other hand, you were hoping for an ounce of originality, inspiration,
or passion, too bad. The plot is a “hero's journey” story so
generic if feels like the script was written using a Mad Libs
template, with the five (five!) credited writers taking turns filling
in the blanks. The battle scenes and some of the music feel like
leftovers from Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS/HOBBIT
films, and to give you some idea of how fresh the dialogue is, the
old, “there's something behind me, isn't there?” line gets
trotted out not once, but twice. To top it all off we also get a pair
of young and attractive romantic leads (Nicholas Hoult and Eleanor
Tomlinson) who have absolutely no chemistry between them, let alone
charisma of their own. Then there's also what may be a career low for
first-rate character actor Bill Nighy, who has done more than his
share of bad movies, as the voice/motion-capture model for the main
giant.

You
tend to expect such depressing mediocrity from Hollywood fantasy
films these days, and are rarely disappointed (see: the recent remake of CLASH OF THE TITANS, SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN, COWBOYS AND ALIENS, etc, etc.). What you don't expect is that such a waste of time would come from a director with the reputation and talent of Bryan
Singer. You know, the same guy who wowed everyone with his indie hit
THE USUAL SUSPECTS?
The guy who managed to make a super hero movie, THE X-MEN,
that managed to be a blockbuster hit without sacrificing intelligence
or integrity? That Bryan Singer didn't show up for this movie. Heck, we didn't even
get the Bryan Singer who made the sincere misfire SUPERMAN
RETURNS. Instead we got the one
who made 1313 Mockingbird Lane,
last year's painfully bad update of The Munsters
that was mercifully canceled after the pilot episode.

Of
course there will be people who like this movie. I overheard some of
them leaving the screening I attended, telling the studio rep how
much they enjoyed the film. I can only assume that these people don't
realize that movies can and should be better than this, even
effects-heavy, pure entertainment popcorn movies. You sometimes hear people make lazy critiques of movies like this by comparing them to video games,
but frankly that's an insult to video games, many of which have
plots, characters, and ideas far more original and interesting than
what you'll find here. If all the studios want to give us these days
is a computer generated fantasy anyway, better to just stay at home
and play the new BIOSHOCK.
1 1/2 out of 4 stars.